~ Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without

Deforestation and other hobbies

When you are choosing logs to plug with mushroom spawn it is important to find a log that has not already been taken over by wild fungus. Additionally, hardwoods are best. This gets tricky since if a tree falls down, it is probably for a reason such as it is diseased or decayed. My dad and John seemed a little too excited to solve this problem with a chainsaw which lead to this shortly thereafter:

For 72 hours. I will let you imagine whether I decided a shower or a bath was more conducive to the company of an entire oak tree.

First, John cut a one inch disk off the end of one of the logs that was the most representative of size and I have been dehydrating it (with the basil that escaped last night’s frost) ever since. This will be used to determine the relative moisture content of the logs later when it is time to fruit them.

Then, I drilled the diamond pattern and innoculated five shitake logs.

I have to really hand it to Eva here who has provided me enough mini baby bel containers that I have not had to buy cheese wax for TWO YEARS despite doing silly things like making cheese and waxing logs. She really is a great friend to selflessly throw herself on those babybels like that.

A lot of seminars I have attended lately have had sections on how to keep your “spouse” happy despite your messy hobbies. By spouse, I suspect they mean wife based on how often the next piece of advice is to just go ahead and buy your own kitchen equipment for things like making delicious sugary nuggets for your bees for valentines day, or mushroom spore propagation. Thankfully, my “spouse” doesn’t seem to care that I plan to fruit mushroom logs in the basement this year (although he balked at the idea of overwintering nucs there). However, my doodle has other ideas:

( Will these be staying here?) (Sorry, too big to fetch)

All waxed up I think they look fairly Halloween-y.

Equally scary is how painful breaking in my new climbing shoes is proving to be.

The mushrooms should be ready to fruit in about 6 months to a year. Right about the time these shoes are wearable.